Frail Pope Takes His Message Of Peace to the Azerbaijanis

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: May 23, 2002

BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 22—
On his first foreign trip since child abuse scandals racked the Roman Catholic Church, John Paul II arrived in this battle-scarred former Soviet republic in the Caucasus today and vowed to continue his peace-seeking missions ''as long as I have breath within me.''

After reading the first paragraph of his speech in faint, hobbled Russian, however, he gestured for a local priest to read the rest to his audience of politicians, intellectuals and diplomats. At his side, President Heydar Aliyev, 79, who was the K.G.B. leader and party boss in Soviet times and whose own failing health has been watched closely for years, looked spry in comparison.

The 82-year-old pope, who on Sunday asked his followers to pray that he be able to continue, is in a race against time -- and an American-based scandal that threatens to taint the final years of his papacy.

The pope ostensibly came to Baku to minister to what the Vatican says are his 120 followers in this Muslim country. (Even that number was double the estimate before the papal plane landed.) He also wants to soothe Azerbaijan's national pride after his visit to its neighbor and enemy, Armenia, last September.

Mostly, in a five-day journey that includes three days in Bulgaria, where the dominant religion is the Eastern Orthodox Church, the pope is pursuing what he views as his mission to reconcile the two estranged branches of Christianity after 1,000 years of schism.

But as public attention focuses on wrongs within the Catholic Church and the pope's health visibly worsens, his visits abroad seem less about his message than his ordeal in delivering it.

For the first time on a foreign visit, the pope today was not strong enough to walk down the stairs from his plane. Instead, he was ushered to an exit on the far side of the plane, out of view of television cameras, and brought to ground by an airport mobile lift. Instead of walking a few yards to the tarmac podium where dignitaries waited, the pope was pushed on the moving cart he began using in Vatican ceremonies two years ago. Today was the first time he used the cart abroad.

The pope, who suffers from Parkinson's desease among other ailments, now uses a ledger clipped to the sides of his armchair because his hands shake so much he cannot hold his speeches. His speech is so slurred he is almost impossible to understand. He cannot always control his saliva. When he cannot wipe his face, aides lean down and blot it for him.

''There are physical limitations which are obvious to all,'' the pope's spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, said today. ''The question is whether they impede him from carrying out his activities and from making his trips. He is showing that this is not the case.''

The spokesman added that the pope seemed in a good mood on the plane, teasingly telling his entourage, ''Once again I force you to travel.''

Last week, two cardinals said that they believed the pope would resign if his condition got so bad that he felt incapable of carrying on in the job. The topic was taboo only two years ago. The last pope to willingly resign was Celestine V in 1294. Asked if the pope knew about the cardinals' assessments, Mr. Navarro-Valls replied tersely, ''He reads the papers.''

The pope, who traveled to Kazakhstan and Armenia only days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, today brought a similar plea for peace and religious tolerance to Azerbaijan, which has been at war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh since 1988 in an on-and-off conflict that has cost 30,000 lives. This is his 24th trip to a mostly Muslim country. He also alluded to other conflicts, calling for peace and ''rejection of fundamentalism and every form of imperialism.''

Azerbaijan is often described as oil-rich, but energy profits are not very apparent in much of downtown Baku, where potholed streets are lined by shabby Soviet-era high-rises.

The pope met privately with Mr. Aliyev, but he did not make any public reference to Mr. Aliyev's long and harsh rule. He did allude gently to the need for ''honesty and accountability'' in politics.

The pope prayed silently in front of a monument dedicated to the victims of Azerbaijan's battles for independence -- which included the scores of people killed when Soviet troops stormed Baku in 1990. Most of the graves were those of people killed in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

At the meeting with Azerbaijani notables at the presidential palace, the pope was presented with a carved wooden cross to represent the contested region, which the presenter rather bitterly described as under Armenian control.

''We were very upset when the pope went to Armenia last year,'' Gueltekin Hajiyeva, a 29-year-old member of Parliament, said after the meeting. ''We hoped he would come here and see the conflict from another point of view.''

The pope tried to keep the subject on peace. After a group of parochial school children sang ''Ave Maria'' in his honor, the pope tried to reply with a personal message, slipping into his native Polish to say, weakly, ''The Ave Maria invites you all to peace.'' His interpreter translated his words into Russian.

Asked if the pope was relieved to get out of the Vatican after so many difficult months, Mr. Navarro-Valls smiled. ''The pope likes to travel for many reasons,'' he said. ''He is interested in where he is going, and not just to escape.''

Photo: On a visit to Azerbaijan, Pope John Paul prayed in front of a monument dedicated to the victims of the country's battles for independence. (Agence France-Presse) Map of Azerbaijan highlighting Baku: Pope John Paul II started a five-day journey with a visit to Baku.